mournfullest spectacle; and salt itself will not save us!


On the morrow morning, accordingly, our Thirteen set forth; or
rather our Prior and Eleven; for Samson, as general servant of
the party, has to linger, settling many things. At length he too
gets upon the road; and, 'carrying the sealed Paper in a leather
pouch hung round his neck; and _froccum bajulans in ulnis'_
(thanks to thee Bozzy Jocelin), 'his frock-skirts looped over his
elbow,' skewing substantial stern-works, tramps stoutly along.
Away across the Heath, not yet of Newmarket and horse-jockeying;
across your Fleam-dike and Devil's-dike, no longer useful as a
Mercian East-Anglian boundary or bulwark: continually towards
Waltham, and the Bishop of Winchester's House there, for his
Majesty is in that. Brother Samson, as purse-bearer, has the
reckoning always, when there is one, to pay; 'delays are
numerous,' progress none of the swiftest.

But, in the solitude of the Convent, Destiny thus big and in her
birthtime, what gossiping, what babbling, what dreaming of
dreams! The secret of the Three our electoral elders alone know:
some Abbot we shall have to govern us; but which Abbot, O which!
One Monk discerns in a vision of the night-watches, that we shall
get an Abbot of our own body, without needing to demur: a
prophet appeared to him clad all in white, and said, "Ye shall
have one of yours, and he will rage among you like a wolf,
_saeviet ut lupus."_ Verily!--then which of ours? Another Monk
now dreams: he has seen clearly which; a certain Figure taller
by head and shoulders than the other two, dressed in alb and
_pallium,_ and with the attitude of one about to fight;--which